


Work This Body

by pareidoliajules



Series: McHayward Prompt Extravaganza [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: AU, Bodyswap, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 17:16:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13252884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pareidoliajules/pseuds/pareidoliajules
Summary: Jane gets a lesson about appreciating herself, and learns the universe has a sick sense of humor.





	Work This Body

Jane’s confidence had always been a fragile thing - she was good, great even, in certain arenas, but overall, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that other people were better. Inherently, somehow, they had figured out something she hadn’t - some people walked in daylight like they belonged there, but Jane sometimes felt like she had to seize the sunlight with both hands just to pull it out from behind the clouds.

The light that was coming into Jane’s room was funny, and she felt like the ceiling - when she squinted at it through sleep-stuck eyes, was much too close. She was absolutely exhausted, but now she could hear her parents clanking around in the kitchen, which almost definitely meant she was running late.

“Mase? Maseface, do you want waffles or pancakes?”

Jane shut her eyes and buries her face under her pillow, unsure if she wants into or out of this dream - why is she dreaming about Madison, anyway?

A door creaked.

“Mason! Lazybones, get out of bed!”

Jane pulled the pillow off her face and sat up slowly - there was Madison, already dressed in her cheer uniform, hand on her hip, looking at Jane expectantly.

“Madison? What–”

“If you make us late,  _you_  are explaining to Coach and  _you_  are running laps. By yourself!”

“What are you–”

“Waffles or pancakes?”

Why wasn’t Madison angry or confused about Jane being–oh, so high up in a…a bunk bed? When Jane looked over she had to look down, and that’s when she noticed.

Noticed  _several things_.

The first was that she was not wearing her silk pajamas.

The second was that she wasn’t black.

The third was that there was  _something_  between her legs that was  _certainly more awake than she was_.

She gave a startled yelp and covered her mouth, looking at Madison with wide eyes. “Get out!”

That wasn’t her voice. She held her hands away from her mouth - not her mouth, not her hands - and scrambled for the phone she found resting next to the pillow. She hesitantly pressed first her thumb and then her forefinger, and then her pinky against the print-reader, breathing a sigh of relief when it finally unlocked.

There were texts and messages waiting, but first - she located the camera.

She was Mason McCarthy.

A text popped down.

_**J :** What the HECKING HECK IS OGING ON JANE ARE YOU THERE???????_

Oh god. Oh god.

“Mason! Get down here already or I’m leaving without you!”

Oh  _God_.

Thirty seconds and a series of breathing exercises later - not even that felt right, how were Mason’s  _lungs_  even different than hers? - Jane slowly climbed out of bed. The legs gave her pause - her legs, Mason’s legs - she’d never seen so much of them, or really known how unweidly they could be. She only slipped about four times, but she eventually made it to solid ground.

She looked in the mirror opposite the desk that was tucked under the bed. She was, without a doubt, Mason McCarthy.

“Mason, are you–what are you doing?” Madison’s voice was closer now, and Jane looked over her shoulder. “Are you really just–admiring yourself? Goodness, Mason, I know we’re attractive, but–”

“Madison,” Jane tried again, still unused to the deep timbre. “Madison. Something–something  _weird_  is going on.”

“Something weird like what?” Madison asked, moving to press the back of her fingers against Jane’s–Mason’s–forehead, checking for a fever. “Are you sick?” Madison paused, then wrinkled her nose in sympathy. “If you’re still backed up, there’s some of those pills in the bathroom–”

“No!” Jane squeaked, immediately covering her mouth–the mouth that wasn’t hers, with hands she didn’t recognize. “I’m–I’m not–Madison, I’m not  _myself_.’

Madison narrowed her eyes. “What?”

Trying to formulate what on earth was happening in a way that didn’t sound completely insane was impossible, given that it  _was_  completely insane. Before she could try to put words to what was going on, she felt a strange sort of pressure behind her eyes, behind Mason’s eyes, and heard–no,  _felt_ –Madison’s voice.

In her head.

Jane stumbled, catching herself with too-long arms on the nearby desk chair.

Madison was just  _staring_  at her. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft and shaky. “…Jane?”

*

“Come on,” Madison said finally, after a half an hour of sitting absolutely silently on the floor of their room. “Come here. I can fix this.” Jane had texted Mason–herself, according to Mason’s phone–to calm down, that Madison knew, and to hold tight for as long as he could, and, on Madison’s order, not to breathe a word to anyone until they got together.

Mason was, in a word, freaking out.

Jane was not doing much better.

Jane was baffled. “Fix–”

But Madison was already standing up and marching out of the room. Jane followed her, managing not to trip on the stairs or catch herself staring in any more mirrors, to what was apparently the McCarthy family library. It was a rounded room with huge windows and comfy chairs, but it didn’t look very used - unlike the rest of the house, there wasn’t the comfortable chaos in this room. Everything was pristine.

Maybe that was why Jane was so surprised when Madison shoved aside the patterned rug on the floor and jerked up a floorboard.

“Madison, what–”

From the floorboard she pulled a thick notebook - it was a five-subject notebook, plain black on the front, except where it was covered in stickers and what looked like glitterglue. Madison remained on the floor and crossed her legs again, flipping through the pages.

Madison was muttering to herself, and a frown knit her brow, and before Jane could even so much as try to fit all of her new gangly length into one of the armchairs, Madison was slamming the book shut and standing up again

“Go get dressed.” Madison said, frustration evident in her voice. “Mason keeps his cheer outfit hanging in the closet.” Jane’s eyes widened. Get dressed.

Get  _naked_.

Get Mason’s body naked.

“Madison–”

“Go! Seriously! Just…close your eyes or something! We have to get to school!”

“Madison, I can’t go to sch–”

“Oh yes you can, Jane Hayward,” Madison said, somehow seeming about six inches taller than her tiny frame actually was. “Because  _you_  are in my brother, so we have to get  _him_  back here, and your parents–”

“Won’t let me skip school,” Jane finished with a breath. “Okay. Okay. I’m going. I’m going.”

Getting dressed with her eyes closed was more difficult than she would have thought, but at least Mason’s clothes were fairly straightforward. For decency’s sake, she kept his boxers on and decided that she could just  _hold it_  until they got to school–maybe once they looked at each other they’d zap back, and Mason could go to the bathroom in his own body.

Of course, all of this was accompanied by a low, constant tug of nausea, because for every minute she was trying to figure out how to work Mason’s body while respecting his privacy, Mason was in  _her_  body.

She couldn’t think about it too hard or she’d actually be sick.

It was only Madison that kept her from completely losing it; the pressure behind her eyes, Madison explained, was not a stroke; it was their psychic inside voice, and Jane found it almost calming, after a while.

“Has this ever happened to you before?” Jane asked as they parked the McMinivan at McKinley. She was incredibly curious about the notebook Madison had unearthed from the library, but she’d barely glanced at it when Madison barked at her to back off, so she didn’t want to ask directly.

“No.” Madison answered flatly. They made it to their lockers–Mason’s and Madison’s were, of course, right next to each other, because Madison had requested a locker change and then bullied Mason’s actual neighbor into switching with her. “Where is he? Where’s Mason?” She stood on her tiptoes and tried to peer over the crowd - but it was Jane who spotted her first.

Er, Jane who spotted  _him_  first.

Mason in her body.

She recognized her own hair and her own jacket, and she set aside the horror of a fashion statement Mason had assembled for her body to wear in favor of catching Mason–Mason-in-her-body–in a relieved hug. She ignored Madison’s offended huff: hugging herself was  _weird_. She was too tall–she herself in Mason’s body, or maybe Mason in her body was too short.

Hugging Mason when she was in her own body was nice,  _because_  he was so much taller. If she ever got back to her body, she’d have to make sure that the hugging was nice for him, too.

“Come on, you two,” Madison snapped, pushing them sharply toward the nearest room–the ladies bathroom, which they hustled into, and let Madison shove a doorstop beneath it.

“Okay. Mason.”

“Oh, Madison,” Mason-in-Jane’s-body said, rushing forward to catch Mason in the same bone-crushing hug that Jane-in-Mason’s-body had received. “I’m so–I’m so  _scared_! I can’t hear you, I can’t feel you, can you feel Jane? What do we do? Is there a way to undo this? What did we  _do_? I swear, Madison, I didn’t do  _anything_ , I just woke up like this!”

It was incredibly unnerving, hearing her voice pitched at Mason’s tone. It was bizarre - Jane was hearing her own voice, not through a recording and not through the alteration of her own ears.

Was that what she sounded like  _all the time_?

“Calm down, calm down, it’s okay,” Madison said, brushing her fingers soothingly across Mason’s face. Jane’s face. God, weird.  _Weird_. “We will figure this out, okay? I brought the book.”

Someone banged on the door. Madison ignored it, took a breath, and then held out a hand to Jane. Jane-in-Mason’s-body.

“This is so weird,” Mason breathed in Jane’s voice, seeming to focus on Jane for the first time. “What did you do to my hair?”

“To  _your_  hair–” Jane squawked, but Madison shushed the both of them.

“Both of you,  _shut it_ ,” Madison hissed. “This is giving me a headache. I need to concentrate. Hold hands.”

Suddenly shy, Jane felt Mason’s cheeks heat up, but she smiled anyway and took…her own hand.  _Weird_.

Madison stepped back so that they were in a loose triangle, each holding each other’s hands.

“ _Hear our call, hear our plea,_

_Put everything back,_

_The way we all should be_.”

Jane was fairly sure it wasn’t English that Madison was speaking–chanting–but she understood it anyway. There was a faint rustle, like the sound of leaves skipping over a dry street, and when she opened her eyes…

She was still too tall.

She was still standing in the women’s room.

“It didn’t work,” Mason whispered, turning wide, fearful eyes to look at Madison. “Madi, what now?”

For the first time since Madison found out what had happened, she looked almost…afraid. “I don’t know.”

There was another bang on the door, interrupting the moment of silence that had fallen over the trio, and Madison quickly brushed the backs of her hands beneath her eyes–had she been crying? and turned, yanking the door back open.

“Hi, sorry! There was an over-flowing toilet, it was a  _huge_  mess–”

*

A huge mess was what the rest of the day was; by the time Jane made it back to the McCarthy house, she was near-tears. While being a boy, being Mason, had certainly been eye-opening and enlightening and intriguing, she wanted very much to be back in her own body.

“We can fix this,” Madison promised after they’d gotten ready for bed. Madison kindly took her parent’s room to allow Mason the whole bunk-bed; it wasn’t as if Jane was in a position to tell the kids at school that the twins literally shared a bed, but it was a kind gesture all the same.

Jane was too tired to even argue. She just nodded and ran a hand through Mason’s hair - soft and silky and she understood why he was always playing with it and styling it now - and turned to their room. She climbed into the bunkbed and truly didn’t even remember falling asleep.

When she woke up, she was herself again. She didn’t know why and she didn’t know how - maybe Madison’s spell was on a time-release - but she was so grateful to be herself that she never again wanted to be anyone else.

**Author's Note:**

> This had to end here because I think I honestly could have kept writing this forever and ever.


End file.
